‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|